“Insinuating that sort of depravity about an officer could get you into a great deal of trouble.”
He grinned! Outright grinned at those words. “Perhaps I am counting on it.”
In an act of anger, I reached a hand through the bars of the door and grabbed hold of the man’s cotton shirt and brown waistcoat to slam his body against the hard iron. “You would prefer for me to kill you now?”
He let out the slightest grunt as his body impacted with the unforgiving metal door. “I imagine it would be less painful than some of the devices I have seen to ‘make an example’ of the likes of me.” He winced as he shifted slightly in my grasp, but Jones quickly recovered to smirk at me. “It would probably be a mite better than a dance with Jack Ketch.” He gestured with one of his hands to simulate a noose about his neck and twisted his face, tongue lolling about, in a mockery of death by hanging. It was oddly accurate.
The mimicry ended quickly, and his smirk returned again, as did the lowered voice from before. “Though, when I said I was expecting a bit of trouble with ye, a quick death was not quite what I had in mind. I told ye I like willing.” He risked pressing his face through the bars once again. The move brought us so close that our noses were near to touching. The rum that clung to his breath mingled with the heavy smell of cologne. “I think ye would be willing.”
I scoffed, but I refused to let the man’s shirt slip from my fingertips. “I think you are a lunatic as well as a pirate. It is a small wonder that you managed to command a ship and its crew, even if they were pirates, if your judgment is so badly skewed.”
“Ye don’t want to know why I said I thought ye would be willing?” he asked, disregarding my criticism of his mental faculties. Even now, angry as I was, I had to admire his confidence, regardless of the fact that it infuriated me more than direct insults would have done. “Ye let your commander walk on ye enough that I can see his footprints on yer forehead. For such a strong man”—his eyes glanced downward as though to roam over my form, though I knew there was not much that he could possibly see, given our proximity and the cell door between us—“to allow himself to become a feather in someone else’s cap, then it goes to reason there must be things that he needs to remain quiet. Savvy?”
“It did not cross your mind that, perhaps, I have no desire to seek such attention?”
He snorted in amusement. “Ye’ve dusted and straightened that coat far too much in the time we have been here for that to be the truth. No, ye like what ye do, the respect ye get and the power. It is the scrutiny that worries ye, which is the only reason ye did not argue with the commander. I know ye wanted to tell the bilge-sucker to go to hell.”
“Another count against you: you have insulted my superior officer.” I do not know if I successfully made the stance sound as though I truly meant it.
If I did, he did not acknowledge it. His eyes darted down toward the hand that still held him in place. “There is also the fact that ye’ve not released my shirt yet.”
“It would make it easier to kill you, having you closer to the cell door,” I said pointedly.
“If ye’re going to kill me,” he said, still wearing his easy smile, “could I at least have your name? Grant a condemned man his last wish, as it were.”
I glared at him for some time; I do not know how long it was, but the silence seemed to stretch on forever. I did not move, despite how uncomfortably close we were. Again, if I were to be truthful with myself, the reason for my discomfort was not what it should have been if I were any normal man. I do not know if he suspected at all, but his blue eyes did not show a sign of backing down.
“At least,” he said, “grant him one of his wishes.” The hand that had been making the nooselike gestures only moments before had moved downward at some point in our discussion, a fact that was made plainly clear to me as that hand slid through a lower square of crossed bars to palm at my person.
For some time, my brain was so distracted by the touch of a hand not my own in an area that saw so little human contact that I could not think to react. I was frozen in my spot as the hand pressed to and then squeezed at me. Though he could have done so painfully to have me at his mercy, he seemed to be aiming to please me instead. That fact, combined with how good it genuinely felt, tore at my mind.
Internally I could hear a small voice, quite possibly my conscience, reminding myself that this man was a pirate, a criminal I had captured who was wanted throughout the colonies for his crimes. I was letting a pirate who had been the Lord only knew where touch me in a private area—admittedly, he was doing so through cloth, but this did little to assuage that niggling voice at the rear of my mind.
It was forced into the background by what must have been the baser portion of my brain, which was reminding me that this was one of the only opportunities to willingly and freely present itself to me in a very long time.
Though the part of my mind that was focused on all areas south was far louder than common sense, it was the common sense which won out, much to my body’s disappointment.
I quickly retreated from the front of his cell, my hand releasing his shirt even as I could feel my breeches growing more constricting. It had been much too long since I had found someone both willing and discreet. That did not mean I was willing to sacrifice my entire career and future for a one-time opportunity at a little pleasure.
Now standing at the other side of the holding area, I had my back pressed to the door of one of the empty cells, my mouth opening and closing like a fish freshly brought out of the water. Jones seemed to find the entire situation highly amusing. I recovered myself after a moment, beginning with a glare before I was able to articulate any words. Jones laughed so heartily that if I were not a victim of his assault, I would have found myself sorely tempted to join in the laughter with him.
“I should have you drawn and quartered for that!” I finally managed to cry out, my hands balled into fists at my side.
“Ye should, but ye aren’t likely to do it,” he said with that confident little grin. I was prepared to ask him how he knew with such certainty, but he preemptively answered my question. “Unless you are hiding a pistol in the front of your pants, I cannot say you disliked my attentions.”
“It would not matter if I did or did not enjoy it,” I said, finding it incredibly difficult to deny what I knew he could likely see straining at the fabric of my pants. “Nothing of the sort is going to happen. Not with you, most definitely. It is immoral, and even if I chose to disregard the cost to my soul, I am not going to risk my commander walking into the jail and seeing me in flagrante delicto with a male pirate.” I folded my arms at my chest, hoping I did not look like a petulant child; I felt a bit like one. “As you so keenly pointed out moments ago, I am very proud of my job and my title. Why would I risk either for you?”
His smirk did not even falter, not for a moment. “Because I am very good at it, and I am positive you are attracted to me. You have blushed more than once in my presence, and I take that to be a very good sign from a man in your position.”
“I have not blushed,” I argued.
He chuckled again at my expense. “You can tell me the truth,” he said. “Ye could even call it a confession. I was going to be a man of the cloth, you know. My parents would have been sadly disappointed that, instead, I found myself as a pirate captain.”
“You are hardly a captain if your crew abandons you.”
With a tone that indicated no sign of distress at the implication his men had left him behind to rot, he said, “I have to agree.”
As though on cue at his words, there was the sound of gunfire outside the jail. Loud shouts carried through the thick walls, and I took a quick appraisal of the situation through the single window at the rear wall between the rows of cells. Outside, I could see the fighting, and I now had to decide whether to maintain my post or to help my comrades defend themselves against this sudden attack. I caught a quick glimpse of the men—and a few women—waging the assault. They were
a ragtag group, but it was not difficult to determine where they came from and whom they served.
“What is this? What do you know of this?” I asked, wheeling around to face the man’s cell, only to find it open and empty, and hot breath at my back.
“It is a distraction created by my very loyal crew,” Jones said, grabbing my pistol from its holster before I could attempt to reach for it. To my surprise, he merely tossed it into the cell from which he’d come. “They will be in to rescue me, if I haven’t already made it out on my own. When you treat your men and women as well as I do, they are willing to die for you, though I would never ask that of them.”
I lunged at the man, more than prepared to use my fists as the pistol was out of the question and my rifle much too far away. I was not accustomed to the kind of fighting that I could already tell this scuffle between us was going to be. I had fought like a gentleman, even done a small amount of fisticuffs in the past, but having to slam the man to the floor and struggle to capture him once again was outside my experience.
We both groaned in pain as our bodies smacked into the hard stone floor; the straw did little to soften the impact. “I do not know how you got out, but you are going back in that cell,” I told him as my fist made contact with his jaw.
My landing the blow hardly seemed to trouble the other man. He was quick in retaliating with a punch of his own, almost as though I had not struck him at all. My side was hit at full force, and had it not been for a tight grip to my shirt and a quick motion on his part, I would have curled my body around the injured spot.
“It just so happens I was a pickpocket before I was a pirate,” he said before using his body to gain enough leverage to fully overpower me. “I was destined to disappoint my family.”
It happened so quickly that I had no time to prepare before I was flipped with my back to the floor and had a pirate straddling my waist and holding down my arms. “I have fought larger and stronger men than ye,” he said. His face was just inches away from my own. “Cannot say I always won, but I always tried. So ye needn’t feel bad about the fact ye’re going to lose.”
He pressed his hips to my own, and there was no denying for either of us that the contact, the rolling on the unforgiving floor, the entire situation, perhaps, had us both hard as steel beneath the fabric that separated us. Scenarios ran through my mind of what this man could do to me, trapped beneath him as I was. Regardless of how little intimate contact I may have received, this was by no means the way I wished to receive it.
I rolled us once again, but he had prepared for it and merely continued the move until I found myself back on the filthy prison floor. “You said you only take willing bed partners,” I grunted out, still trying to struggle against him despite being more aroused than I could ever remember being.
“Tell me to stop,” he said in a confident way that made me want to hit him again. “Just tell me to stop this, and I will.”
I opened my mouth to make a noise, to tell him to stop, to try to remember the fact that this would likely cost me my position in the governor’s military. I attempted multiple times to deny that my body wanted him. Such a denial was made all the more difficult by the simple fact that I had found the man attractive from the moment he had stumbled into me while trying to leave the tavern.
Taking my hesitation for consent, which I suppose it really was, his hand began unfastening the buttons at my waist and worming its way beneath. I had had enough quick exchanges over the years that my own hands acted on instinct, grabbing for his dark breeches and mimicking his movements.
The part of my brain that had been protesting how these acts could cost me my position was long since silenced, and when I felt Jones’s lips meet my own, the source of that voice was pushed to the furthest corners of my mind. Sex was one thing, but a kiss was so rare I could count on maybe two hands the number of times someone other than my mother had offered me one, and fewer than half of those had been by a man.
Our hands fumbled at first, my own doing so more awkwardly due in part to the mouth upon my own, the taste of rum and something herbal on my tongue as we canted our hips against one another. I let out an audible gasp as I felt him free me from my breeches to the cool air of the prison. I did the same in turn.
I felt our hands and intimate areas connect as our bodies began rutting like sexually starved animals. Perhaps, I think, we were no better than that. Our tongues continued the battle that the rest of our bodies had long since abandoned. Hands that had been trying to strike the other were now grabbing, squeezing, sliding. One of mine had moved of its own volition to wrap around the tail of Jones’s long auburn hair. His hand, the one not at the place where we joined, had moved to grab my hip so roughly I considered the possibility that I might bruise.
His mouth was moving across my jaw as I felt my back arch beneath him, and words escaped my now released lips that I would likely need to admit in confession. Admitting them would be much simpler than explaining the circumstances that had caused them.
“It is amusing,” he said before nipping at my earlobe and earning a groan from me. “I tell my crew that the reason I am the way I am is because I did not get to shore often enough in me pirating career.” He laughed and looked me in the eye as his hips and mine continued their furious movements below. “They have no idea how provocative a man can be when he’s writhing beneath me.” His wicked tongue—the true culprit of this entire situation from its start—began to trace the shell of my ear. “Or above me.”
Upon those words, Jones shifted up to a kneeling position. “Are ye going to join me up here?” he asked to coax me to join him in this nearly upright stance.
My knees protested the movement on the hard stone floor, but I could focus on the pain only momentarily before we resumed frantic kissing and thrusting against one another. We were both lost to our instincts. I pulled harshly at that reddish hair as his stubbled cheeks grazed across my own clean-shaven ones.
I could feel the intensity of the moment building and my own completion approaching quickly. So fast was it that I could not utter even a warning before I released with a loud cry that echoed through the empty holding area. Jones’s hips shifted back, and his lips returned to mine as he allowed me to bring him to his own finish with a few quick strokes.
Still in a haze from the fierceness of our encounter, I was slowly trying to tuck myself back beneath my clothing. Jones, on the other hand, had recovered much more quickly and was already buttoning his breeches. “If you wish to find me later, contact the tavern where you met me. I am sure someone there will be able to pass along the message.”
I prepared to stand to tell him there would be no contacting him, that I still had a duty to perform, no matter how reluctantly. As quickly as he had moved before, he slid behind me and wrapped an arm around my neck. The arm squeezed tightly, so tightly that no matter how much I pulled at it, I could not pry it loose. He had me at his advantage, which was where I had probably been from the moment we had met, even when I had been putting him in chains and later in a cell. He had always had the upper hand.
The last thing I remember was him pressing his lips to my temple before my world turned black.
I SIT now in my home, waiting. Stupid fool that I am, I went to the tavern several weeks after Jones’s escape. Despite the fact that countless pirates had raided the city and immobilized or killed a number of the commander’s best men, I was the one who was under suspicion because Jones had escaped on my watch.
I do not consider myself so bad a liar that the commander actually realized I was not telling the truth when I said several of the pirates broke into the jail and knocked me unconscious. In reality, my commander’s anger seemed to come from the governor’s learning that I was responsible for capturing Jones in the first place, and that my commander had lied in taking credit for the arrest. Though I’d had nothing to do with this revelation to the governor, I was blamed for it all the same. I suppose I could understand, though never justify, my commander’s dis
gust at me. There was word a few weeks ago that one of the captains would soon be placed in command, as soon as he could be “groomed for the position.”
I have always known that such a promotion would never be in my future, but I am still disappointed that I was not even considered.
Given such close scrutiny, it was some time before I felt comfortable enough to venture to even enter that tavern. It was several visits before I dared to speak to the barkeep about Jones, though the pirate had consumed much of my thoughts these last two months. I was informed that the man would be in touch with me at a time and place of his own deciding and that I would not know where or when it would be.
So I sit and wait at my meager abode, just as I have done for the weeks since. He is still on my mind as I take a sip of the glass of cheap brandy in my hand. I stare intently at the liquid as I let the slow burn move down to my stomach. It is almost the same as the fire he ignited in me that day, pathetic as that sounds even inside my own mind. But what he started has yet to fade.
“I thought I saw a bit o’ brown under that wig.” Familiar Welsh tones wash over me, forcing me to look up from my glass. “Now, will ye tell me why ye were willing to tell the barkeep yer name but not me, Geoffrey Chesterfield?”
I stand from the threadbare armchair and look at him. It has been months since our last encounter, but he looks almost unchanged from my memory. “I am not going to question how you got in here. I imagine it would get me nowhere to ask.”
He walks over to me, hands in that jacket of his, the same one I had confiscated in the jail that day and he had taken back. “How many pirates did ye tell the commander it was that took ye down?”
I also know better than to ask how he knows this as well. His instincts about me have proven correct before, and his sources were good enough to lead him to and into my home with no difficulty. “A half dozen at least,” I say, keeping my face impassive. “It took a bit of explaining why pirates would leave me unharmed when I had captured their captain.”
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